Fishing for walleyes & saugers on Lake Wisconsin has been pretty much hit & miss so far this fall. One day can be great and the following day (or couple of days), can be just the opposite. That’s how it went this past Saturday & Sunday once again for my boat.
Saturday’s fishing was awesome and Sunday we had to work our butt’s off just to get three keepers in the boat. One of which we threw back because it just barely hit the minimum 15″ mark. It was to close to feel comfortable putting it in the live well and maybe find out later that a conservation officer had a shorter ruler than we did.
Dewey Schultz was in on the good fishing with me this past Saturday. He started out a little slow on Saturday morning but caught up to & passed me in a hurry on fish in the upper slot size range which runs from 20-28″ long.
Two of my first three fish were over 20″ long and they all three came quickly after arriving at our first spot. After that though, over the next hour or so, Dewey pretty much took over by jigging a blade bait in one hand and a hair jig tipped with a minnow in the other hand while fishing out of the bow area of the boat. The blade bait was hot early on and the hair jig took over after about 8:30am.
Vertical jigging a blade bait was on fire for the first hour or two in the morning but after that, the blade bite went in the tank for the rest of the weekend. At that point, the only thing we found that decent size fish would still respond to was a hair jig tipped with a minnow. It sure wasn’t fast and furious after that early morning bite, but one here and one there is still better than the activity level of the fish on Sunday morning.
Last week I lost a big fish on a jig/moxi combo and then was promptly bit off in that same general area about a half hour later. This weekend, I couldn’t get the fish to respond to a jig/plastic combo at all. But this 41″ pike did take a liking to my hair jig. It was caught in the same area where I was bit off last weekend. There’s no way of knowing if it was the same fish that bit me off but regardless, it sure was fun to catch.
I know there’s a lot of ice heads out there hoping for cold weather so they can get an early start on there favorite winter time activity, but I’m definitely hoping for a few more open water trips on Lake Wisconsin with a shot at a few more of those big, fat walleyes & saugers tugging on the other end of our lines.
Pic 1 – another shot of the 41″ pike. This fish was released.
Pic 2 – this 29″ channel cat took a liking to a hair jig/minnow combo.
Pic 3 – Dewey Schultz with a 23″ walleye.
Pic 4 – Dewey with another slot walleye.
Joel
That’s some awesome late season fishing! Hopefully you can get back out a couple more times before winter sets in.
Looking forward to your late season reports makes me crazy each Fall! Great report and great fish!!! Wow!!
Looks like a great day on Saturday Joel. Nice work. I’m going to try and get out Wednesday and Friday. Supposed to leave for Israel on Saturday so may have ice by the time I get back. Need to try to get out at least once more before I leave.
Finally a decent fighting fish out of that lake.
Exactly Kev! Should have been the first picture of the report. LOL!
All nice fish Joel!
I know you cat guys won’t believe this, but honest to gods truth, that cat didn’t fight as hard as the big pike and not much harder than our better walleyes.
Total elapsed time to catch that cat, maybe 45 seconds.
Maybe it’s the cold water that took some if its fight away or maybe it was just because this particular cat only had half a tail but considering its weight, I would have expected a better fight.
Regardless, I’m more than happy to catch a fish like that or have a client catch a cat like that while walleye fishing.
Hope you put him out of his misery.
It’s still out there swimming around, waiting for one of you cat guys to give him the so called, “proper respect” and front page status that he/she so deserves.
Nice fish
Beautiful fish Joel! What size jigs and blades were working best for you?
Blades were 1/2oz and hair jigs were 3/8oz.
5/16oz jigs will work also but you may end up with a little more line out behind the boat.
1/4oz blades also work well at times but I like the larger profile of the 1/2 ouncers at this time of the year.
Great catch pic’s to! Blade’s seal the deal cool to hear I have been doing just awsome with them on the perch and a few browns.
Nice fish Joel. Thanks for the hair jig tip Saturday.
Caught 2 more walleyes 16 and 17 within 5 minutes after tying on the purple and….. hair jig.
Art
Glad to hear that tip worked for you and the boys boat Art.
That looks like a hoot Joel, darn nice fish sir
How much pressure does that lake see during the ice season
Thanks Bret and everyone else who took the time to post a reply.
As for ice fishing pressure on Lake Wisconsin, it’s pretty lite. A lot of people have tried and very few have had any success. The ones that do stick with it usually live on the lake and put out tip-ups which they can watch from their house with bino’s. A few of those people have pulled a small number of very big fish out. Overall, it’s been a notoriously tough place to ice fish for walleyes & saugers.
Same goes for big crappies although a few people did okay on some of the crappies last year.
The bays on the other hand routinely kick out decent numbers of panfish. Most are average and a few are decent in size.